


To Be My Lawful Wedded Super-Soldier

by anenglishwolf



Series: Steve and the Soldier [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Same-Sex Marriage, Thorki - Freeform, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 15:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5544650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anenglishwolf/pseuds/anenglishwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's beau is the childhood friend, who's also the grim assassin who tried to kill him.  He'd have to be crazy to marry him, right?</p><p>Tell that to the rest of the Avengers.  They're too busy trying to get the ceremony just perfect.  And help Steve write his vows.  Because how hard can that be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be My Lawful Wedded Super-Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> The song Steve chooses for the ceremony is Pete Seeger's, 'The Ballad of You and Me'. Because check out the lyrics:
> 
> Over the hills I went one day,  
> Dreaming of myself and you.  
> And the springtime of years since first we met,  
> And all that we've been through.
> 
> May I not with delight still dream  
> Of the years of the summer and fall to be,  
> And the many, many verses still to be sung  
> In the ballad of you and me 
> 
>  
> 
> Some background Thor/Loki going on.
> 
> No warning for violence, it's not explicit but heavily implied.
> 
>  
> 
> Inspired by the 'wedding vows' episode of Aziz Ansari's 'Master of None', because that show is awesome.

“...?” The question that the Winter Soldier has just asked Steven Grant Rogers reverberates through the refined and classy restaurant. They've been eating pasta and funny-looking mushrooms, up until the last half-minute. This place has Tony's seal of approval, and Steve can't recognise a damn thing on the menu. Even though half the Italian families on the block, back in the old days, used to drag him in for a meal every so often – spaghetti and oil and a bare sprinkling of cheese, some tough beef in a good week – when he was looking particularly scrawny. (The whole place has gone quiet, from the moment James 'Bucky' Barnes – as was – put his knife and fork to one side, threw down the screwdriver he'd ordered to chase his champagne, and went down on one knee. It's not just the Soldier who's waiting for the answer.)

The question echoes incomprehensibly. Because he asked it in _Russian._

Of course he did. The Soldier's still talking to Steve exclusively in Russian, even four months after Steve brought him in, cooing and petting and besotted. And admittedly, it's a beautiful, eccentric, musical language. But it's getting to the point where if he gets one more reply in Cyrillic speech-bubbles, to enquiries about whether the Soldier wants coffee, or if he's taken the trash out yet for old Mrs Hamblyn in the apartment opposite Steve's still-retained Brooklyn apartment, Steve is going to throw his shield at the apartment's opposite wall hard enough to embed it in the vintage art deco posters he's got out of storage.

It's not like he's not doing his best to approach and untangle the problem from his own end, either. He's taking Russian classes – of course he's taking Russian classes, at the beginners' level and a second intermediate class – optimistically – running concurrently with it at NYU, at a class open to audit, part-timers and post-grads. Plus the odd private lesson when he can squeeze it in, in between superhero Avengers duties, from a call-girl from Georgia. She likes the more intellectually stimulating second occupation, even if it comes with a concomitantly unimpressive hourly rate. (She's a Juno of a creature, statuesque, blonde, bored and brilliant, funding her psychoanalytic training through prostitution. And she seems magnificently unperturbed by the presence of a fumingly disapproving and jealous Soldier, nonchalantly popping into Steve's home office and checking up on him every ten minutes. Giving her meaningful looks, and tapping metal fingertips against the frame of the door as he leans against it. The draw and exhale she takes on her sobranie - Black Russians, not especially ironical but somehow significant – is always contemptuous. It's like watching a David Attenborough nature show, where any moment the lioness is going to plunge huge yellow incisors into the grey alpha wolf's backside. Steve feels the urge for chips and soda, and the rest of the gang on the couch to goggle at the action.)

As an aesthetic experience, Russian is charming and beautiful. As an intellectual discipline to be mastered, Steve is finding that it's an instrument of torture. At Russian, he's the worst. He's the _worst._ Whatever part of his brain it is that was supposed to deal with Russian, the super-serum didn't quite reach it. But he's spent these weeks and months determined to master at least a basic grasp of the language. If the Soldier is pettishly set on not speaking English to him, then he'll damned well speak Russian with Bucky – with – with the Soldier.

It's not a matter of romance. It's a matter of basic good manners and interpersonal relations, as leader of the Avengers. It's also a question of safety, and professional competence. He needs to be able to communicate with all team members, which now includes the Soldier. It's ridiculous – and potentially dangerous – to have to get intel from Barnes relayed or translated through Bruce or Natasha, because he won't talk to Steve in English.

He can speak just about enough Russian, now, to glean what the Soldier's up to in the field – when a target's down, when he needs backup, when the little old lady toddling in front of the target is a HYDRA plant. But he needs more than that.

He needs communication skills. He needs full emotional disclosure and issue resolution.

He needs to be able to say, “For God's sake, stop feeling me up while we're in the queue at the bank. You're embarrassing the teller. And you're not embarrassing the little old ladies behind us half enough. They're loving it, and I don't know what's become of decent modesty and social disapproval in this degenerate century. My mother, your ma, they'd have smacked you round the head and pulled you out of there by your ear, yelling all the while. Not snickered about us being 'adorable' and taken photos on their goddamn phones. How do little old ladies even know how to use a smartphone anyhow, when I still haven't mastered how to use the Amazon app and not get an unnecessarily accurately labelled package of dildos dropped off at Stark Towers? When I meant to order a water filter and a packet of Japanese frog candy? Is that Tony messing with me? That's got to be Tony, right?”

Amongst other things. But yeah, he definitely needs to be able to say that last. Because the Soldier is, all these months down the line, still happily exhibitionistic, and sexually harassing him in public. As well as falling asleep on his shoulder (and his lap) in team meetings, stealing his candy (and feeding it back to him) during Avengers movie night, and keeping him under constant surveillance due to what he perceives as Steve being a particular HYDRA target. (Okay, he may have some grounds for that.) Sometimes he monitors the security perimeter in the evenings, if they're at Stark Towers. And yells at the security detail, if he finds the slightest weakness. In English, unless Steve's around.

It's like living with... a doting ex-assassin, who bear a terrifying resemblance to your childhood buddy and secret one-sided sweetheart, Steve supposes. Who has just proposed marriage, it's pretty transparent, whether or no Steve understands a word he's actually said.

It's making him crazy. He's pushed a little closer to the edge of insanity, all the time, with the Soldier holding his hand, ready to jump with him.

He'd have to be insane.

“Yes,” Steve says.

xxx

It's not as simple as that, of course. It's not as simple as it _could_ be, considering that they could just get Elvis-married in Vegas and have done with it. That would mean Tony Stark wasn't in charge of organising the wedding, reception and most importantly, bachelor parties for both of them, a clear advantage. Tony Stark: Wedding Planner, is a figment of nightmare, a vision, a monster that Steve wouldn't wish on his worst enemy. Who would have thought that he'd insist on taking over from Pepper, re-imagining Pep's discreet and tasteful ceremony and Tatler double-page spread, with a high-energy flair and enthusiasm and - frankly - expenditure, that looks set fair to halve at least one of his personal trust funds.

Steve does try to protest. A bit. But Tony's having none of it. “Hey, I brought you two crazy kids together, what with insisting on waking you up in the first place, Capsicle. And it's only right – since I consider myself pretty much _in loco parentis_ – that I foot the bill. And if I'm footing the bill, Cap, then it's gonna be done my way – which means a full-tilt, no holds barred, hi-octane extravaganza of a superhero wedding. Relax! You'll love it! I've got everything signed off by your boy already!”

(Totally true. Steve has watched as Tony has outlined his plans for a return to Steve's vaudeville days on the stage, 1940s-themed dancing girls, stockinged and bouffanted and wasp-corseted, to a glazed-eyed Soldier. Who closes his eyes in ecstasy at the vision laid out in imagination before him, and merely sticks out his metal hand, and beckons for pen and contract, his approval a foregone conclusion. Steve had never expected that the Soldier would become Tony's greatest – worst – enabler. If Tony ever decides to go in for large-scale homicide, it's going to be a real problem.)

“Look, I'm not sure about...” Steve says, more helpless than six feet three of solid serum-fed muscle and bone has any right to be. Everything, he wants to say, although it seems both picky and vague. Everything, I'm not sure about everything, barring Bucky, Barnes, the Soldier. Whoever he is or wants to be, I'm sure about that much. Where he is, is where I want to be. Always was.

“Don't worry about it, Cap,” Tony says, patting his shoulder with a slightly glazed look in his manic eye. He's probably already considering gilding the placemats at the wedding dinner, or something. Getting Taylor Swift in to sing 'Ave Maria' and 'Shake It Off' as a medley at the ceremony, segueing into 'Diamonds Are Forever' as the flowergirls run up and down the aisles throwing one and two carat gems from their cute widdle baskets. “I've got this covered, everything is under control, relax. The only thing you have to worry about is writing your vows. I hear the Soldier's pretty much got his first draft down. But you're making good progress, right?”

Steve swallows. Suddenly the whole fuss and shebang of the wedding recedes into the distance in a faint mist, and he couldn't give a good goddamn about it. Let Tony fire rockets instead of handing out confetti if he wants: if it's going to be an over-the-top bunfight, then he and the Soldier will get through it somehow. They'll smile, and be congratulated by the orneriest most unhinged bunch of pals two superheroes were ever blessed with, and survive and be hitched at the end of it all.

As long as he gets his vows written, in the meantime. “I'm, uh... working on it,” he lies. “You got any ideas?” Yes, folks, he is that desperate. He's asking for advice on writing wedding vows. From Tony Stark.

But Tony throws his hands up, and looks horrified at the thought of providing inspiration for anyone's sentimental maunderings up at the altar. “Hey, I'm doing my bit here, Cap,” he protests, backing away, alarm on his face. He gets a lot of expressive play out of his eyebrows and goatee. “Funding and running the show, that's playing to my strengths. If you're looking for a bit of iambic pentameter and wooing the loved one with some soppy billing and cooing, you're going to have to look elsewhere. Try Bruce, I caught him reading a Superhot Gay Harlequin in the lab yesterday over his lunch. He claims it soothes the savage beast, but I think he's just hot for hunky bare-chested firemen, myself.”

And with that parting shot he makes his escape, and Steve is left with no improvement on what he's got for notes, regarding his vows. This, at the moment, amounts to a two-line quote from Nora Roberts, and a reference to having brought some extra dumb to the union, in case the Soldier has none handy of his own. It's not going to do the job. He needs to get advice from someone else.

xxx

And, well, Bruce. Tony suggested it, it's worth a try, although the boffin seems, often, like the least romantically-inclined member of the Avengers out of the whole bunch, at least since his relationship with Betty went south. Steve tracks him down in the lab, where he appears to be irradiating something, peering at it, scribbling down furious notes in a lab-book and then whacking the dial on the irradiating-thingummy up to eleven, in order to go through the whole process again. Or at least that's a complete layperson's impression of the procedure, viewed through the lens of Spinal Tap and Monty Python. (Tony has taken great care and a lot of personal oversight regarding his cinematic education, post-freeze.) But Steve freely supposes that he misses some of the finer details.

And Steve has got on great with Bruce ever since he was microwave-defrosted and returned to active duty. But now and today, maybe not so much. Possibly it's the request he's making that's making Bruce so durned ornery, because he is indubitably getting riled up.

“No!” Bruce is gasping, not two minutes after Steve made his extremely polite and gentlemanly enquiry about Bruce's ideas on the subject of wedding vows. “I can't think about – it's very unsettling for me to – you know I was engaged to Betty and – I'm not supposed to be upset like this, didn't Tony give you the list of potential triggers – oh, oops, dammit–“

Steve isn't stupid. He spends the next one hundred and twenty seconds doing everything he can think of to calm Banner down – yelling at JARVIS for some Handel and Vivaldi, dimming the lights, talking therapy-speak in soothing tones, talking about baseball scores from the thirties – a guaranteed thrill – and getting out the Liptons, 'cuz tea's supposed to cool the libido, right, and maybe it does the same for the other monster Bruce has raging to break out and establish dominance?

None of it works. Two full minutes, and Steve's feeling unusually tiny and vulnerable in the presence of a hulking great green monster wearing a few fetching scraps of fabric and holding a relatively miniature porcelain cup and saucer. Two and a half minutes, and the cup and saucer are no more, or at least only tiny shards of rosebud porcelain, lying in the larger fragments of what remains of the lab. That was Pepper's tea-set, Steve remembers: sent by her English auntie for her thirtieth birthday. She's going to dismember him. Then set the pieces on fire with her glow-worm routine.

Maybe he ought to take command of the situation, disable and subdue the Hulk by force or by guile. He's Captain America, after all. But on the other hand, he's _only_ Captain America. And he knows that even he has his limits. Steve retreats to the furthest-away corner, and lets the storm rage on until it rages itself into quiet and defeat. At that point, the Hulk is sitting in the corner of the lab diagonally opposite Steve's own, and sobbing quietly into a lab-coat that he's retrieved from the coat-racks. His heaving lime-green chest is naked and goosepimpled, and altogether he seems so harmless and defeated – while having completely destroyed everything in sight – that Steve feels obliged to come and sit beside him. They just side-eye each other quietly for a few minutes, and then Steve pats the Hulk's knee.

“Sorry,” he says inadequately. “Didn't mean to upset you. I just needed some advice on, well, you know...” He trails off, wary of mentioning anything relating to love, romance or fiancees, considering the havoc it's just resulted in.

But the Hulk manfully represses one last sob, and wipes his nose with what looks awfully like a ragged strip of what used to be his trousers. “Har',” he says, rather mystifyingly. Then he explains himself, by thumping his chest with one great green fist. His expression is more soulful than Dum-E's whine for WD-40 oil when he's squeaky around the joints.

“Heart,” Steve repeats, comprehension lighting up his face as the Hulk nods. “Yes, the heart.”

And the Hulk bashes his chest a few more times, and sighs a lot, rolling his eyes at Steve much as if to say 'You and I, brother, we _know_. We've been there, we've lived it.”

It's nine hundred and seventy-four percent more eloquence than Tony offered him, at least. It's helped. Regarding the spirit of the thing, if not the actual meat of it, the Hulk has helped. He is a muse.

xxx

Steve would do more about putting at least 500 words of lame jokes and Hallmark poetry together in a text doc on his phone. But to be honest he's a little occupied with ridding the city of insane robots, and SHIELD being packed out with HYDRA agents, and whatnot. All of that irrelevant nonsense, getting in the way of his personal life. He does manage to send Nick Fury a despairing voicemail via a secure line, when he gets a spare five minutes, though.

Yes, dead Nick Fury. That one. Well, officially, anyhow.

There's some delay before he gets any reply, but that's okay. He figures that Nick will have his own issues right now. But he does eventually receive an email from a masked source, that probably couldn't be identified. (If he was going to tell the regular ex-SHIELD non-HYDRA techs about it, which he isn't.) And he opens it under the nosey but helpful tutelage of Tony, on a controlled network.

'Steve,' it reads. 'I'm dead. Dead dead fucking _dead_. You may have noticed. So why are you asking me? However, if you value the advice of a corpse, then I strongly recommend you go in heavy with the Elizabeth Barret Browning, finesse a little Walt Whitman over the middle eight, and whack 'em in the punchline with the application of your useful little tenor to some of Arethas's 'I Ain't Never Loved A Man'. If you fail to take this sound strategical advice, then don't come crying to me when it's decree nisis at dawn in six months. And you've got loverboy shooting your fine all-American ass with buckshot, when he defects back to the other side 'cause he ain't getting the bodice-ripping breathless romance he was anticipating at home.

P.S. You can take this as my RSVP. I assume my invite got lost in the post.'

Steve is grateful for an informative and considered response, from beyond the grave. He isn't sure that he agrees with all of it. However, he's also not sure that he dares not to take it.

xxx

When things are a little more settled down, he coaxes Thor into a little light sparring in the Stark Towers gym. (I.e., not settled down at all, but if he waits for that he might as well jump back under the ice here and now.) And under fraudulent pretences, he begins to finagle emotional and artistic advice out of the agony aunt of Asgard. Not that Thor is reluctant to proffer his opinion. It's only that when he gets stirred up and emotional, he gets a lot less careful about pulling his punches than he is otherwise. And even Captain America has reason to be careful, when sparring with an incautious and excitable god of thunder.

Still, ten minutes later, when he's nursing his bruises and being patched up and put back together by a tender and remorseful Asgardian nursemaid – Thor with a first aid box, that is – then he has Thor's undivided attention, and maybe more of it than he bargained for. “...and then with mighty hammers they smote the marble halls to dust, seeking the maiden hind transformed as every huntsman knows they must, and lo!” Thor, er, thunders, five minutes into a soliloquy.

Turns out, the God of Thunder has lots of opinions, about appropriate and romantic and heartfelt things to include in self-penned marriage vows. He's especially keen on them being heavy on the poetry. And very generous with the self-penned efforts.

“I will write you a lay to praise the good Soldier, brother,” he booms out, as Steve makes his escape, finally, claiming exhaustion and mortal wounds and bubonic plague. “It shall be an epic to rival the lay of Gilgamesh! I will hymn his fearsome prowess in battle, as much as the beauty of his form! The Lay of the Winter Soldier shall echo down the ages, and put fear and lustings into the heart of all who read the transcriptions of your vows!”

Steve hits the elevators, just as Thor tries out a couple of potential first lines for the Lay, and he can only thank the serum for allowing him to make such good time. The brief snatches he can't avoid catching – about 'round haunches ripe for plucking' and 'a thousand skulls did line his walls' are more than enough. That's the required dose of Harlequin-level sentimentality covered, then. Many, many, many thanks to Thor.

xxx

He does feel a bit bad about it, later, though. Well, mostly about his panicked cry of, “Oh, God, NO!” as the elevator doors closed. It possibly didn't accurately convey his genuine gratitude and warmth, regarding Thor's generosity and affectionate interest, and Steve feels, shame-faced, that he'd like to put that right and convey his thanks to the generous fellow. Preferably in a way that _doesn't_ encourage him to continue right along, and write a hundred-thousand word sequel drawing heavily on the Song of Solomon and Dr Seuss.

So when the guilt-trip he's taking forces it on him – and in between fending off an influx of crazy drone-bots and mad AIs – he goes looking for Thor again, during what little down-time they have.

Who should be in his floor in the towers, because that's where Natasha points him. And Nat is Never Wrong when it comes to locating a mark. But still, when he knocks at Thor's bedroom door, and gets a vague grumble in return that he takes as _permission to advance, soldier_ , it's not Thor on the other side of the door.

It's Loki. Loki, laid out on the bed, curled around a pillow and dozing faintly – just awake enough to glower at Steve. He takes the glower to be about waking an Asgardian god from a deep and refreshing sleep, rather than a homicidal desire to take over his mind and subjugate the Midgardian race of men. Going by the fact that his mind's still his own – unfortunately, at the moment. He'd gladly hand it over to anyone also willing to take on vow-writing duties, but he doesn't think he knows anyone who's quite that much of a fool. In any case, Loki acknowledges his presence – his existence – with a mumbled and only faintly contemptuous, “Cap'n.” And then closes his eyes and drops his head back on the pillow, with the clear intent of returning to his divine slumbers.

He's not actually wearing peejays, but he might as well be. (He's not wearing his horned helmet, either, which is probably a good style move.) Cuddled up as cosy as a bug in a rug, he's also clutching something in one hand, white-knuckled, that is... That is...

Well, if that's not a Me to You tatty-bear, then Steve's a red-butt baboon crossed with a recently-defrosted woolly mammoth. He can't see what it's got written on it, not with Loki possessively clutching it close, protected against his breast-plate. (Which he has _not_ removed for his inexplicable afternoon nap on Thor's bed.) Steve wonders, privately, if its belly-legend does, in fact, read I SHALL KILL THEM ALL. Given Thor's paean to the prowess and bloody, gore-ish headcount of the Winter Soldier on the battlefield - which he appears to regard as seductive flattery, designed to charm the pants off a love-object – it doesn't seem altogether unlikely.

(It also seems to have worked, all things considered. Well, Loki's here, isn't he? Napping, with Thor's pyjamas under his pillow.)

Steve feels that he may possibly have intruded enough already, upon a very delicate situation. “Um, sorry to disturb you,” he mumbles – to the foe he's tried to kill, oh, he's probably lost count at this point of the number of times. Who has certainly done his utmost to dismember and disembody Steve. “I'll just... erm...”

This is the point at which he shuffles out backwards and shuts the door noiselessly behind him. Except that he doesn't, in fact. No, because as he tip-toes backwards, making his move to flee, the god of mischief stirs again. And then, with extreme abruptness, and spooky speed, he sits bolt upright in a split second, no yawning, no stretching, no human pause for bone and tendon and muscle to avoid tearing or snapping. Upright, instantly, like a robot, or a snake. And the eye he fixes upon Steve is beady as any cobra.

“Captain Rogers,” he says, smooth and alert suddenly as if he's a hostess, welcoming Steve to a high-society cocktail party. “How may I be of assistance to you?”

This, this attention and civility, is somehow more alarming than snoring somnolent indifference and neglect. “You can't,” Steve says warily. And he takes a step back, that has him bumping into the door-frame. He's normally a lot more super-serum graceful than that. But then, he doesn't usually have to exhibit grace and speed and exit-finding skills under the eye of a malevolent Asgardian. “I mean, thanks. But I'm fine.”

He turns to go – to get the heck out – and that should be that. But super-serum speed isn't god-speed. Loki's there faster than him, faster than light. He's standing in the doorway, leaning on the frame in a very _hello-seductive-kitty_ way, and barring the way. “Oh, but I insist, Captain,” Loki says, with a smile. “I owe you so much. You came here with a purpose: and now it is my mission to ensure you achieve it.”

It's a _very kind offer._ And it should be a simple matter, to politely decline. Yet somehow, a minute later than that, he's sitting on the edge of the bed, with a bone china cup of tea in his hand – is this Pepper's tea-set? Someone is going to _die_ , Asgardian god or not. And he's pouring out his heart. To the god of lies.

“My brother's poetry is muscular, and somewhat unrefined,” Loki says with a dismissive sniff, when he's heard the gist of Steve's plight and his plaint. “Much like the man himself. Not to dismiss all virtues it possesses, but for a wedding it will not serve. I will express this to him with great tact, and his feelings will not be wounded. I have much practice in the matter, regarding his literary efforts. Now, regarding this mysterious advisor of yours...”

(Because Nick Fury is dead, of course, and Steve, while willing to accept advice regarding his vows from anyone, including from the God of Lies, Trickery, Mischief and Tight Green Leather, is still possessed of native caution and a little discretion.) “I fully approve his recommendation of Miss Barrett Browning,” Loki pronounces, a faint pout to his lips. “And yet I cannot understand the lapse of taste involved in selecting 'I Never Loved A Man' as the most appropriate song from Miss Franklin's oeuvre. Surely even the greatest dolt could perceive that either her magnificent cover of 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', or her own 'I Say A Little Prayer', are the appropriate choices for a wedding? Clichéd, one might say: pedestrianly hackneyed: and yet, I strongly advise you, one must never fear a cliché if it emanates from the great, the _spiritually-inspired_ body of work of the Queen of Soul.” He eyeballs Steve severely, and Steve feels properly reprimanded. He feels like - well, a lot like when Sister Maria used to take a strap to his backside, back in the days when he and Bucky were short on candy, and decided that communion wafers were an acceptable substitute.

“Isn't that so, Mr Yogisson?” Loki enquires. But he isn't talking to Steve. He's talking to the bear. He's lifted it up on one palm, to look at it eyeball to – well, to plastic button.

(Yes. Thor did go for I SHALL KILL THEM ALL, it seems, as the very zenith of romance.)

Twenty minutes later – loaded up on Orange Pekoe tea, choco-Liebniz, and frank terror – Steve manages to make his escape. Loki has promised assistance with Thor, re-written his opening two lines – well, frankly, his only two lines so far – with the aid of Strunk and White's _Elements of Style_ , and the _Harlequin Romance Style Guide_ , and announced that he will officiate at the ceremony.

Yep. Turns out that Loki is qualified and ordained as a minister, in four different religions, six worlds, eighteen different denominations, and both as a matter of cheaply-bought online certification, and years of study in every seminary, ashram and cult-like organisation going. “It's a hobby,” he'd said, simply, in response to Steve's raised eyebrow. “Everyone needs a hobby. Even gods. My foster-father, Odin himself, for example, is an inter-world model train champion.”

“I will liaise with Stark,” he says now, grandly bidding Steve farewell at Thor's bedroom door. “You need feel no concern: we will create a beautiful and memorable day for you together. Consider it my wedding gift.”

When Steve staggers, dazed, into the elevator two minutes later, it occurs to him that he hasn't even _invited_ Loki, still less asked him to don the dog-collar and take up the King James translation for a nuptial ceremony.

He's not going to point it out. They've had all the apocalypses they need on Midgard, lately.

But it might be worth checking out whether Loki studied with the Russian Orthodox church in St. Petersburg, as he alleges, anyhow.

xxx

When he goes to visit Sam, on leave from superhero duty, the Soldier has disappeared for the day, with a kiss to his cheek and coffee by the bedside early in the morning, and a long, involved, solemn-eyed explanation for his outing. Which he knows _damn well_ doesn't mean a damned thing to Steve. But the kisses that accompany it are sufficient explanation unto themselves. They leave Steve blurry-eyed and relaxed. And as he listens to the Soldier clack and whir (the arm, obviously) and efficiently routinize his way out of their shared Stark Towers suite – setting Steve's own tatty-bear upright on the bookcase as he leaves, where it's had a drunken giddy mishap during the night, falling over the pile of books it rests on – he stretches, luxurious, and formulates his own plans for the day.

They involve going to visit Sam in the little house belonging to his grandma, that she's loaned him for the summer, while she holidays in Florida. And while he thinks over Tony's offer of a place in the Avengers, and in Stark Tower. Sam is a soldier, a counselor, a wounded, masculine, sensitive soul with the heart of a poet, an extensive collection of serious intellectual literature, and – now he's out of the service – three cats. If anyone is going to be able to help Steve put together something heartfelt, touching, sincere... And with enough jokes that it won't have Tony catcalling, and Clint hijacking the servers for harder liquor and pretending to puke, then it's Sam.

His plans don't involve re-meeting his promised groom coming out of Sam's side-door, just as Steve himself opens up the garden gate and slips inside. The Soldier clearly wasn't expecting to get caught out in his secret errand, either. (And isn't that a turn-up for the books, seeing as how he's _The Soldier,_ , the secret stealthy assassin who's stalked and snuffed out a hundred marks, who tailed Steve before – well, before Steve foiled that via unorthodox means, but never mind that now.) His face – dear lovely face – opens up in a smile that is _so damn Bucky_. But Steve doesn't let himself think that very often, and he firmly puts the thought away.

Bucky was Bucky. The Soldier is the Soldier.

He has his arms around Steve before Steve's really absorbed the fact of his presence, and he's muttering something that Steve has no hope of translating, beyond what he's learned to recognise as 'my love' at the end. Still, he'd put some money on it being some version of 'Ya got me! It's a fair cop!' At least, judging by the glinting mischief of his expression, as he pulls back.

The embrace also gives Steve a chance to skim his hands over the contents of the soldier's backpack. And as he's released, he pulls out the folder stuffed into its open flap. He flips it open quickly, before the Soldier can gently, and ruthlessly, remove it from his hands.

Because of course he will, and of course he does. And he wags one metal finger at Steve as he does it, grinning broad as Bucky ever did. But not before Steve gets an adequate glimpse at the contents of the folder. Adequate enough, at least, to take in the presence of a notebook or two, sheaves of paper, a small book of the kind bought at bookshop cash registers on impulse, that definitely bears the words 'wedding' and 'etiquette' in the title. And a small, battered volume of Pushkin's poetry. And more that that, in there, quite a lot more. But the Soldier is extremely firm in removing the folder out of his hands, flesh and metal hands equally remorseless in detaching it from Steve's wistful, clinging grip.

He pulls a reproving face at Steve – the two of them a foot apart, if that much – and wags his finger all over again, polished, metallic, more like a schoolmaster than reckless rebel Bucky ever was. Steve's only punished with a quick kiss, though: and then what, judging by the dry tone, is probably some version of ' Nice try!' And the Soldier winks at him, and gives a recognisable farewell – Steve has at least picked up that much in interminable incomprehensible lessons – and then he's gone, whirling out of the gate, who knows where. On other errands, stealing more engagement gifts – Steve's ring burns a loop into his finger, figuratively, and he simply hasn't had the courage to enquire about its source. The sapphire's bad enough.

And he's out of sight, down an alley and off to snuff out a mark for Coulson, or order monogrammed pocket squares at Natasha's instruction, and Steve will see him again when... Well, it's not as if Steve doesn't have tasks of his own to complete. Pressing ones.

On that thought, Sam appears in his own doorway, late on the scene but still a welcome sight in Steve's eyes. A potential useful intelligence source, after all. Steve bears down upon him: and even though he has an appointment and an invitation, Sam holds up a hand to stop him in his tracks, before he even gets as far as his friend's threshold. “Don't even think about it,” he says firmly. “I'm not telling tales on either of you to the other one.”

Damn. Steve always has had a giveaway expression, unable to hide his feelings and intent without the most strenuous efforts, at least in his personal life. Maybe that's how Sister Maria always knew who'd been at the cookie jar. Or perhaps that was the general crumbiness around his and Bucky's chops, every time. “How do you know what I was going to ask?” he protests, anyhow.

Sam has his hands on his hips, now. That means business, all right. “So you weren't going to poke around in my paperwork looking for notes and clues, and pump me for information about how far along Barnes is with writing his vows?” he asks, eyebrows arching, and a handsomely sardonic expression on his face.

Damn it. Rumbled.

Steve sighs, accepting that he isn't going to find out just how far the Soldier has the jump on him in preparation and composition. (Of something that's going to have Coulson shedding manly tears and the peanut gallery – or you could just say, Tony and Clint – guffawing in the aisles.)

There's still the matter of what he officially, supposedly actually came for, though. Two minutes in, and Sam has him sipping a fine French roast at his breakfast bar. Sam has a pair of glasses Steve didn't know he wore for reading on the end of his nose, and is musing through the opening paragraph. (Steve has scratched out that paragraph on a thumby smudged creased bit of paper, and scored it out, and re-written it half a dozen times.)

(The glasses definitely suit Sam. He's very handsome in them, an African-American BtVS Giles. He's scholarly and distinguished and kind of hot, and Steve doesn't say so. The Soldier gets very antsy if he notices other fellows too much. Steve can't remember Bucky even ever noticing that he _was_ noticing, if you can follow the convolutions.)

“...and are you sure about the conjunction in the next-to-last line? I mean, Strunk and White can take their tight-ass objections to run-ons and shove it, as far as I'm concerned, when you're weighing it in the balance against sense and poetry and punk-rock true feeling and authentic voice, but there is a _limit_. Look, if I just add a little coda, here, something restrained and wry to bring down the mood and heighten it by contrast at the same time–”

“Did you lend the Soldier a book, while he was here?” Steve interrupts, feeling full of reckless despair. “A book of poetry?”

And Sam pushes his glasses up his nose - honestly, that is a very good look on him, hot nubile young vampire slayers would come a-running the minute they caught a glimpse of his well-defined pecs and the beadily academic look in the eye. He looks cautious – and again, couldn't be more Rupert Giles if he had a stake in one hand and a cryptozooicon in the other – as if even this admission might transgress ethical boundaries. “I may have,” he admits, cagey. “Want to make something of it?”

“Pushkin,” Steve says, dispirited, staring down into the dregs of his coffee, and searching for the remains of his self-esteem and cultural polish, in the swirling grounds. “Not even in translation. Not that he needs it, of course. Why do you even have Pushkin in the original on your bookshelves, Sam?” he asks, maybe a little bit accusing. (He's not accusing Sam of luring his man away with toney highbrow literature and a flair for languages, and his sexy professor vibe when he puts those spectacles on, of course. Not yet.)

Sam gapes, not unreasonably. “Wha'?” he says. Fluent. Attractive. _That's_ what's going to lure the Soldier away, yep, right there. He pulls himself together a little bit, though. “Um, I guess most of us are making an effort to pick up a little Russian?” he points out, uptalking cautiously. “You know, for obvious reasons, having an obstinate Russian-speaking assassin on the team?”

“Just as long as you don't make the effort to pick up a bigger Russian,” Steve says, mulishly, and yes, he did say that. He can feel his lower lip jutting out, sulky and self-conscious, and boy this is a new low. He droops his head down so that his fair bangs catch in the last slurp of his java, and Sam pats his back kindly.

“What's wrong, Steve?” he asks. “Considering you're still in the honeymoon stage – and you'll be literally on your honeymoon, soon enough – you don't seem exactly as happy to be alive as an engaged man ought to be. And I'm pretty sure that you don't really believe that I'm after your man. Care to confide?”

Steve sighs. And he smooths out the crumpled page of writing in front of him, vastly improved by Sam's input, even with all of the crossings-out and exclamation marks and green-ink additions that he's marred it with. Sam has helped a lot. But how is it going to be enough? “I'm not the Pushkin-quoting type,” he says, sadly. “I mean, I'm not a _Philistine_ , Sam. I read. God, when we were kids, I used to have to drag Bucky kicking and screaming to the public library. He'd read the newspaper or a detective novel, check out the baseball scores, while I was checking out art history books and trying to get the librarians to order me obscure technical journals from special collections. But now...”

Now, the Soldier has lived through decades without Steve – as far as he's been allowed, by HYDRA. He listens to Russian classical composers, and the kind of jazz that doesn't get featured on coffee commercials. But time was, when Steve couldn't drag Bucky to a concert for love nor money back in the day. When the only music he was interested in was accompanied by a band and a heaving dancehall, with dames packed wall to wall. He makes abstruse political jokes with Natasha, with references and cross-allusions that Steve doesn't understand even when Nat translates for him. Training for the eventuality of honeytrap assignments and needing to 'pass' for civilian on occasion, appears to have included the Russian equivalent of an intensive liberal arts degree, and maybe on to masters' level.

(Steve suspects that the Soldier doesn't just read poetry, but also writes it. The speed with which he shuffles odd bits of paper out of the way, when Steve catches him sitting on a windowseat and gazing dreamily out at the New York skyline, like he's composing odes to pigeons and pastrami sandwiches... Maybe he writes poetry _to Steve,_ but Steve can't figure out any way he might ever get to read it. Not without resorting to going back to treating him as an enemy combatant, and tricking or beating it out of him.

Sam's looking at him, now, with sad, kind eyes. But he's also shaking his head, and perhaps tutting a bit, like he can't quite believe in the idiocies of these foolish mortals, unversed in basic psychology and common sense. “Steve. Steve. Steve, Steve, Steve...” And he shakes his head again, like he's actually trying to be annoying. “The Winter Soldier's a cultured man. I'm not going to try to deny it. I was actually quite impressed by his grasp of non-standard meter and rhythm in the Beats. And I did lend him the Pushkin. But, Steve. Do you really think it matters – to him, or to anyone – whether you've read Nabokov in the original? Or can compare and contrast Tolstoy and Thoreau with respect to transcendentalism? Or if you've ever seen a production of Strindberg or Uncle Vanya or The Importance of Being Earnest?”

(Steve maintains an innocent face, here. He once played Lady Bracknell, in a college production when he was auditing a few classes, while he and Bucky were sketchily keeping the rent paid on a cold-water flat and alternating being in work. That's something that no Avenger ever, ever, ever needs to know.)

Sam tuts a bit, and then smiles, and grabs Steve's hand and holds it. (This is the trouble with therapy, counseling, emotional awareness, communication skills and just the modern world in general. It results in heterosexual ex-military men who are happy to hold your hand, in public. It's not that Steve doesn't like it. It's discombobulating, that's all. In the world he grew up in, you'd better not have another fella for a sweetheart, and that was that. But simultaneously, if a fella was going to hold your hand in public, then he'd damn well _better_ be your sweetheart, also.)

“Barnes loves you, Steve,” Sam tells him, with heartfelt sincerity, with the kind of true-blue earnestness that only a HYDRA operative could fake. “You could turn up at the altar late and hungover, in a pair of speedos, and sing a Barry Manilow medley and he would – actually, I think he'd tell you off a little. There might be spanking involved – I don't want to incentivise that kind of behaviour, but there might. But he'd still marry you.”

And Steve thinks that it's probably true. But to be on the safe side, he still picks Sam's brains about art, literature, music and the most unspeakable grammatical _faux pas_. Just in case, for an hour or so, pulling apart muffins and madrigals, and refilling the coffeepot a time or two.

And when he leaves to head back to the Tower, Sam leans out of the side-door of his gramma's little house in the suburbs, and calls out to Steve as he unlatches the garden gate. “Speak from the heart, Steve. That's all you've got to do. You've got a big heart, you'll be fine. Just speak from the heart.”

Steve's not going to claim it's the most original advice he's received so far. But Sam is a smart guy – too smart to think that being clever is the most important thing you can be. And Steve remembers what Loki had to say about clichés. He adds it to the list.

xxx

He wakes up in the night – one more twenty-four hour period gone, one day closer to zero hour and he's still not done, unwritten, unfinished, oh God – and the dread is right there, immediately. But so is the Soldier: sitting in the wicker chair in the corner of the room, calmly examining what would be his cuticles, if it wasn't his metal hand. Steve thinks, for a moment, that it's all his adrenalised, caffeine-fuelled fretting about the vows, that's interfered with his sleep and woken him up.

But he pushes himself up on his elbows, with the Soldier immediately aware of his presence, smiling at him with a lazy warmth. And Steve notices the small heap of clothing in the other corner of the room. Well, clothing with a body inside.

Oh, Buck, oh, Bucky – and he remembers when he was eight, and Bucky was nine, and knocked that loud-mouthed asshole Tate Donovan down. (For saying Steve's dad had lit out of town with a speakeasy jezebel when he got bored with a kid and a wife and a job, and his mom probably kept company with sailors to keep the rent paid.) Bucky was slaying dragons for him then, a wide-grinning freckle-faced nine-year-old knight. And the Soldier's doing it now, and what ever changes, really? Except that Steve's never going to know if Bucky ever wanted the same things that the Soldier wants, Because, God, he would have given them away so freely.

What the Soldier wants, when he glides up from his chair so sinuously, like a snake, like – God, you'd think he was a cyborg or something, not just the arm. Bucky was a good dancer but the Soldier moves like a flamenco dancer crossed with a bullfighter. And he comes over to sit beside Steve where he lies, on the edge of the bed. Smiling proudly, and a little shy, as he trails a hand over Steve's arm, and belly, over the sheet, and presses a kiss to Steve's cheek. It's a question, in any language.

It's ridiculous that he asks, at this point, but he always asks, in words or other ways. Steve thinks he just likes the whole gallant knight/fair maiden scenario: which casts Steve as what, Rapunzel? But he's resigned to that. The Soldier might as well be the Knight: he likes to know he's won the trophy, wooed the fair maiden, that he's earned his prize fair and square, keeping Steve safe. And pretty.

It's not so bad, to be prized so highly, to award oneself as the spoils, to the victor. (Always the same victor.) Steve would be lying, if he claimed not to get an erotic kick out of it himself, as he gives it up. More thoroughly than anyone ever has given it up, sweaty and gradually opened up and breached, infiltrated, invaded by the enemy combatant, sleeping with the avenging enemy with a vengeance. (And every time, every time Steve curses Tony for his idle speculation, three days in, about whether HYDRA gave the soldier a bionic metal dick as well as the arm, because, just because he always does think of it. But pierced by the proof, he can say for sure that, Tony, a) just shut up and b) no. Absolutely not.)

Watching the Soldier lose control – give little gasps, amazed and vulnerable, this rigid perfect inflexible fighting machine, almost human in a way only Steve can draw out of him – is all it takes, now, for Steve. He comes, staring wide and blue at a dark ceiling and almost crying with it, knees tight enough around the Soldier's hips to hold him in place. (If he hadn't the rhythm of a rabbit, with the force of a piston, a bore-drill, a battering ram.) With the Soldier biting into him at shoulder and neck, and with no infuriating glib Russian observations to offer at all. Clawing and plunging, wildly arrhythmic, wild for Steve. Is it terrible that Steve doesn't think of Bucky once?

It seems a lot more terrible, some times, than the dead body of the HYDRA operative in the corner. It's not the first. They'll deal with it in the morning. Tony doesn't need to know about the blood soaking into his fine sealed antique oak flooring, not any sooner than necessary.

The Soldier does start murmuring something in Russian, after he's grunted out a wild _hoorah_ and collapsed on Steve's shoulder, and hummed and praised Steve with satisfaction and pleasure for five minutes or so. This bit, Steve understands without translation. Steve just pats him on the shoulder, sleepy, exhausted, a little stern. “Yes, yes, I know. 'You will kill them all'. Well done. Go to sleep, now, sweetheart.”

xxx

They do indeed deal with the body in the morning. Tony does in fact have a conniption, somewhat soothed by Bruce leading him away by the hand, making him eat oatmeal and watch Spongebob Squarepants in the media room. Natasha does rather swoon over the whole thing, even as she barks out instructions to the clean-up crew, the NYPD and the morticians. She's muttering admiring untranslated asides to the Soldier, a hand on his arm as she smiles up at him, and he puffs his chest up with slightly alarming pride and uxorious smugness. It's like a bullfrog who's just fertilised every one of his lady's thousands of frogspawn. After some extremely efficient and effective courtin'. It might make Steve jealous, except that they both keep sneaking proud, and in the Soldier's case, proprietorial, little glances his way, as he attempts to calm Tony all the way down by adding extra blueberries to his oatmeal.

All the same, Nat helps a lot, with their little local difficulty. And out of all of them, she has a rather different viewpoint on the Soldier – or, perhaps, shares his viewpoint, his perspective, more than any of the rest of them possibly can. So when Steve goes to search her out in the afternoon, it's as much for her assassin-wrangling skills, as for advice on literature and the language of love.

And when he finally tracks her down, she's in a ballroom a couple of floors above his suite in the Tower, a ballroom that Steve hadn't even known existed. Standing in the middle of the parqueted floor, and yelling up at the ceiling, as he pushes open the double glass doors. “Goddamn it, Clint! There's no pigeon nesting in the vents, and even if you find it, there's no guarantee that you'll master the pigeons, and not the other way around! These are New York City birds, Clint, they do not fear you!”

But however distracted she is, she's still Natasha Romanov. He thinks, as he walks in, that her attention is singly focused, and he'll need to alert her to his presence. But even as he approaches from the south-east of her person, she flings out a hand to stop his approach, even as she bellows up at the eaves. Her austere, delicately-modelled remote-goddess face is a little red-cheeked. She looks about as much like a pitbull trying to pass a kidneystone as she's ever going to. With just a hint of matryoshka, of course.

A little shower of crumbling paint flakes falls from the high ceiling, following a thud. There's another thud, and the chandeliers nearest wobble slightly. Natasha sighs. “JARVIS,” she says, at normal volume, into the air – at a discreet volume, even. “If Mr Barton looks to be in danger of actually breaking the ceiling and falling, can you immobilise him with the stasis-ray?”

“Certainly, madam,” JARVIS responds, low and pleasingly modulated. And Steve can feel the surprised and innocently impressed expression on his face.

“JARVIS has a stasis ray?” he enquires in a half-whisper to Nat. Maybe the twenty-first century isn't such a gosh-darned let-down after all. No flying cars, it's true: but on the other hand, Deepika Padukone and stasis rays.

She grins at him, and puts one finger to her lips. “I don't know – officially,” she responds. “But anyhow, I'm sure he could come up with something, if necessary. To save that goddamn asshole's neck. JARVIS is a very creative AI: look at the brain he came from. What can I do for you, Steve – in between saving Clint's annoying ass, and trying to keep Tony's caterers' plans under some kind of realistic artistic control?”

Steve is busy, right then, actually looking up ceiling-wards much in the manner of Natasha. And he's admiring the ceiling itself, because it's a glory and a legend. A really excellent Angelica Kauffmann rip-off – really, excellent, and it's not surprising, because it's not as if Tony does anything by halves. Steve almost forgets what he's here for, because he could just bathe in the glory and the ethereal haze of clouds and cherubs and pastoral shepherdesses and languidly erotic goddesses, in the panorama that this ceiling extends to him.

Another shower of small, luminously pastel flakes gently caresses his head, and Natasha's, like the dandruff of the angels, in response to yet another distant thud. That's as Clint pursues whatever imaginary objective it is, that he has in mind, up there. And in response, Natasha _roars._ “Clint! I love you, I owe you, and I'm going to kill you! Do you have any idea what kind of damage you're doing up there? Do you know what it is that you're scrabbling around on, on your knees with that stupid bow and arrow? It's an Angelica Kauffmann ceiling, for Christ's sake! And never even mind what it's worth in itself – do you have any notion what it cost Tony to have it shipped over from Europe? How much? Let me just say, enough that if you come through it in the next five minutes, he'll probably be getting Barnes to price up a hit to take you out! I'm _just fuckin' saying!_ ”

She sighs, looking more homicidal than simply exasperated, and turns to Steve as if she's ready for a nice satisfying bout of complaining about her partner in fighting crime. But Steve is too busy for that. He's too busy feeling sick. He actually literally feels sick, and not in the online.dictionary.com sense of literally as 'metaphorically'. “It's a – real Kauffmann?” he says, and it might be a gasp. It just might. All of the art student in him rises up and demands retribution for damage done to priceless and immortal art.

“Steve,” Natasha says, and she gives him a very dry look, doing it. “You really think that Tony would settle for a fake Angelica Kauffmann?” But she takes in Steve's evident woozy horror, at the thought of the possible imminent desecration of a bit of immortal European art history, and takes charge. “Here, sit down,” she insists, pushing him down right there in the middle of the ballroom floor, shiny and polished and ideal for sliding around on with duster-cloths tied over your feet. And she abandons him a moment, and goes to fetch hot coffee from the caterer's kitchen attached to the ballroom.

It only takes her a couple of minutes, but it's not so quick that Steve hasn't recovered, mostly, by the time she comes back, with a couple of hot steaming cups of java. Recovered enough to yell up at the scurrying and thudding up in the ceiling – the precious, beautiful, fragile ceiling – himself. To yell, “Hawkeye. Hawkeye!” There's no response. But the thudding slows, and then ceases, and Steve continues. He's feeling a little less woozy: and some of his military bearing has returned. Even while sitting cross-legged, like he's back in Sunday school. “I know you're there, and I know you can hear me. Barton, I respect you, you're an excellent man to have on the team, you're a team player who displays initiative, while respecting the objective, and who falls in when overruled by a superior officer in the field. You're a professional, and you maintain professional standards on a mission. And so do I. But Clint – I want you to know, there's nothing professional about this ceiling. Not to me. This ceiling is an extremely personal goddamn ceiling, as far as I'm concerned. I have a mild-mannered reputation, Clint. I have the manners and standards of yesteryear, that my mother taught me. I still open doors for ladies and do my senior citizen neighbours' grocery shopping for them. I watch PBS. You know it, I know it. But you've also seen HYDRA agents' reactions when I focus my attention on 'em during a shootout, Clint. What's a HYDRA scumbag, to me, Clint? He's meat: dead meat. You know that too. And that's why you should take it extremely seriously, when I tell you that if you damage a goddamn Angelica Kauffmann ceiling – if you bring this ceiling down – then I will TAKE IT EXTREMELY GODDAMN PERSONALLY!”

All right, all right, he also leaps to his feet on the last words. And maybe also adds – as a hundred and fifty pound weight skitters and thumps up above, right to the other side of the ballroom - “And I'll send the Soldier after you, too! He also has an educated appreciation of the visual arts!”

Natasha's at his elbow, then, with a coffee cup she's pressing into his hand, repressing a smirk because she's trying to look disapproving. “Oh, sit down, Steve,” she cajoles him, prodding him in the bicep. “The ceiling's bulwarked and reinforced with steel girders, you don't think Tony's taken every precaution? Clint's not going to bring it down. Sit down with me. You didn't hunt me down to talk about high-class art and respect for ceilings.”

And she sits down with him there, amidst an acre of polished parquet in the echoing empty ballroom, and for her perhaps it's more like being back at a ballet lesson, head bowed and listening to Madame lecture about jumps and _en pointe_ and gossiping about how pretty the boy dancers look in tights. They're both a long way past childhood, though, such as it was. Oh, such a long way, so much damaged and warped since then. It's a wonder either of them can stand straight and look anyone in the eye, still less function. And for Bucky, it doesn't bear thinking of. Nat's eyes are faraway for a moment, gazing at the ceiling, the far wall, wherever Clint has quietly hidden himself away from their threats and their vengeance in the name of beauty. But then she brings herself and her attention back to him, as courteous as she is deadly.

“Well, now that we've dealt with that,” she observes, her smile sweet enough to take the bitter edge off his coffee. “How can I help you, Captain?”

He's asked all the others: Maria and Pietro and Rhodey and Dr Strange as well, by now. He has notes on his notes and annotated end-notes into the bargain, and even Dum-E and Butterfingers have chipped in their two circuit-board's worth. (He has a print-off of a digitized representation of two little manikins hand-in-hand, a few seconds of electronic melody to show for it. He's afraid to tell Tony that Dum-E has the soul of a poet. Having given birth to a liberal-arts robot might be enough to send Tony off the deep end, if he isn't already gently doggy-paddling there.)

It's harder to ask Natasha, though, and he's not sure why. Maybe precisely because she's a little closer to the Soldier. It's like asking the Soldier himself, which only ever ends in the bedroom. So she asks for him, because Nat is intuitive like that. “You want to say you love him,” she says, smiling. Well, it's true. Perhaps he doesn't want to put it as baldly as that. That's the exact problem. “You wanna say you loooooooooove him,” she croons, now, winding her beautiful head about on a swan, swan, swanny neck. “You wanna kiiiiissss him, you wannna huuuuug him, you wanna make him yours forever and a daaaaaaaayyyy...”

Steve gives her a look that has stopped men dead on the field of battle, and she at least pays him the respect of shutting up, and just grinning at him. Then she looks more serious, then sober altogether, then frankly a little grim. “How many men do you think you've killed, Captain?” she asks him then. “I know, I know,” she interrupts his automatic response, “it's hard to calculate exactly. But your best estimate. A ballpark figure, at least.” So Steve gives her one, and it doesn't matter what it is. Since she asks. She nods, thoughtfully. “A little high,” she allows. “Perhaps you have fewer qualms than I would have thought. But perhaps you see where I'm going with this, in that case, Captain,” she suggests. “I think the Soldier would probably give a figure at least five times that. Perhaps more like ten, going by his reputation and his handlers, and some unofficial fan biographies that used to do the rounds of the Red Room Academy. And for myself...” She indicates herself with a glowingly graceful flick of pretty fingers to her bosom, and smiles modestly. “A lady must retain some mystery. I'll leave it to your imagination: but it makes your own number seem very restrained. Perhaps even Puritanical.”

Steve honestly does not doubt that that is true. But he's still a little puzzled by the choice of subject of conversation. From true love and marriage to headcounts: it does cover a fair swathe of Avengers interests, but still... She doesn't wait for him to pose the question: just clicks her tongue, and raps at his knuckles with her little fist, to command all of his attention. “Just think,” she says, her eyes intense, “that as many men as you've killed, that's how many men have tried to kill you. Ya-ya-ya,” she adds, flapping a hand at him as he makes as if to argue the toss. (Some of them never saw him coming, after all. Some were collateral damage. Some were trying to kill personal friends of his, rather than him. These are finicky points, he's aware, but still. Accuracy counts for a lot.)

“Near enough,” Nat says firmly. “All those hundreds of times, you could have died: you could have been the one. It only takes one, to get through your defences, the one you don't see coming, isn't that right? That's what they say. And that goes for any of us: any day, any mission, that could be the day that's the last day we ever see.”

Steve ponders her words, very seriously. “Are those thoughts your wedding present for us, Nat?” he asks, then. “Are you getting them engraved on placemats, or something? Because if so, I gotta tell you, Thor's poetry beats your spoken word rap into a cocked hat, and that's really saying something. Considering it's _Thor's poetry,_ and all.”

He grins at her, and she flips him round the head with evident affection. “Shut up, Captain,” she advises him. “I think you understand what I'm saying.”

And really, he does. He ponders it a moment, and then says, “Enjoy what we have, while we have it. Because there are no guarantees. Am I right?”

Nat nods, and she isn't smiling any more. “Anything can be taken away from you, Steve, Any time. That was one of the first lessons I ever learnt, but we're not going to talk about that,” she forestalls him, one hand palm-out flat in his face, even before he starts. “You're lucky. Both of you, you don't know how lucky you are, except maybe he does. It doesn't matter what you say, but make it good, whatever it is.”

And she stands up slow, looking down at him, and shakes her head. “Because you're so lucky.”

Steve isn't sure if it's bitter or not. But even though she's happy for him and he knows it, that's different to being happy. That's why he follows her out of the ballroom, to the other side where the little staff entrance leads off the main hall. She's moving too fast even for Captain America to keep up – at least, if they're going to keep up the pretence that no-one's crying, and no-one needs a hug right now. No undignified sprints going on here, no siree jimbob.

And he'd catch her in the doorway, or he'd catch her in the stairwell. But he's arrested, before either of them quite get that far. Well, wouldn't it arrest you? To have the glass of the incarcerated fire-extinguisher embedded into the wall, just beside the doorway, suddenly shatter outwards and spray you with delightful little diamonds of glass, that could take out an eye or a testicle?

And the extinguisher itself falls out, drops abruptly to the ground with a clangorous bosh that's loud enough to deafen non-super eardrums. Because a fist – punched through from the top of the little cubicle – has pushed it out. And a moment later – with a bit of struggling, a bit more property damage, and the agility and bendiness of a snake or a mouse escaping through a cubic millimetre of space – Hawkeye appears in its place.

Or his head does. Upside-down.

He smiles at them. Upside down, it has a seasick, disagreeable kind of an effect. And Steve just gawps, because wouldn't anyone. But it take a heck of a lot to stump Natasha, certainly more than this. She's hardened by usage and custom to Hawkeye, after all. “Clint,” she says, sharply. “How did you even get yourself in there?” she asks, gesturing up at the wall the rest of him is presumably encased in. “The attics, I can understand: the air vents, the cavity walls. But as far as I'm aware – and I've seen the blueprints – that wall isn't even a cavity wall. It's solid brick. Are you _burrowing_ in there?”

“Still not disclosing my methods, Nat baby,” Clint says amiably. “If micro-drills and small explosives are involved, that's between me and JARVIS. I haven't brought the ceiling down, isn't that the main thing? So get off my case. I just wanted to offer my congrats to the Captain, here, on his impending nuptials. And to put my two cents in.”

He squints up at Steve, and it's still discombobulating, this view. Steve has to blink and squint, as Clint says, “About love, and vows, and all of that, Cap. Just to say that Nat's quite right. You're a lucky man, to win the hand of the one you love, and be with him. Not everyone can be that lucky. You can't always be with the one you love. Or sometimes you have to make a choice, or sometimes you have to live up to your responsibilities. Maybe you have to remember you love someone, and try to forget you love someone else, too.”

And if he's advising Steve, as gentleman scholar and assassin, man of the world, then why is he looking at Nat? “Anyway,” Clint says abruptly. “Like I say. Nat's right. Isn't she always? Lucky, lucky you. Make sure he knows you know that.” And with that, like a bat swooping up and disappearing into the darkness of eaves and attics, he's gone, back into the wall, with a skittering and vibrating hum across the poor maltreated ceiling.

The glass isn't, though, sprayed out across the floor, with a great dent in the beautiful wooden tiling from the extinguisher. Steve doesn't have time to do a thing or alert housekeeping. He just says, up into the ether and the wall-cavities and the wires, “JARVIS, the floor here? Can you send someone?” And he hurries after Nat, who's gone too, a very swift and suspicious exit, her heels clipping neatly down flight after flight of stairs.

Damn poetry, and damn love too. Sometimes friendship takes precedence, Steve thinks, and right now he needs to be a friend.

xxx

When it comes to the ceremony, he has something written, finally. Of course he does. He must have been crazy to ever think that his friends would let him down, would let him get to the altar without adequate prep, and all the firepower he needs.

They're the Avengers, right? When a mission is on, they _bring it_. The mission, today, being Steve's words. And boy, is he gonna use 'em.

And now, this moment, he's actually at the altar. Right now. Right now! Well, to say altar: actually there's no altar as such, of course. Of course, they're holding the ceremony on top of the Avengers Tower. Where else? It's not like the Hulk was going to be comfortable, trying to fit into the pews of the Little Church Around the Corner. And no minister was ever going to be happy about Hawkeye hanging off the walls, and swinging from the rafters.

The minister they have here for the ceremony, though, is infinitely more accommodating. And in full green leather and horned headgear, a benevolent smile playing upon his lips, he waits until the assembled company settle down, gather amongst antique oak benches and blossomy cream and white flower arrangements, and beams upon them. He exudes a gentle bonhomie. His fingertips meet each other, where he rests his hands over his ribcage, before the lectern.

It's like he thinks he's an actual fucking man of the cloth. Steve thinks back to Father Flannery, of his childhood churchgoing, and his reaction if he'd ever encountered Loki. It'd have probably involved bell, book and candle, and the finest exorcism rites that Rome had to offer.

He's getting married, by Loki. Steve's getting married. By _Loki._

But he turns his mind from those last two words. Because the fact, the wedding, the being here, the love, that's the important part of it. And he squints his eyes sideways, shyly, to take a look at his bridegroom. Head slightly bent in reverence, hair newly trimmed, and looking spiffier in a morning suit than any filmstar on a fifty-foot billboard, Bucky has never looked handsomer than now.

(The Soldier. Not Bucky, but the Soldier. Steve bites his lip, painfully, as he reminds himself. Now, on his wedding day, is not the day to be getting confused all over again, about this.)

Of course, even the Soldier can't hold a candle to his best man. Or best person – best lady? Steve fumbles for the appropriate term a little, in his mind, and gives up. Natasha, anyhow, is a splendid vision. After they'd fought a pitched battle over who got to have her as best... assassin, in the first place, and of course the Soldier had won out. In an argument in two languages, held in a sushi bar with sake shots downed for every inarguable point made, the party who can reminisce with the target about the dear old days in the Red Room and the gulag, taking out marks and vying for foremost headcount, is always going to be the one to seal the deal.

She's wearing a morning suit, not the frothy strapless dress and heels you might expect. Just like the rest of them. Also unsurprisingly, she puts the rest of them to shame. Lean, tailored, graceful, she's immaculate down to the carnation in her buttonhole, and very well she knows it. When Steve catches her eye, the admiration on his face must be utterly evident. Nat shoots her cuffs, ostentatiously admires her diamond cufflinks, and grins at him, from across the Soldier. They have a bond, now, she and Steve. And it's good to see her look so cloudlessly happy, at least for today.

He gets a jab in the ribs, that's what he gets, though, for being a concerned friend. One from the Soldier – who promptly captures his hand, squeezes it tight and clearly intends to hang on for dear life throughout the service. Just in case Steve gets any last-minute ideas about doing a _runaway bride_ and heading for the elevators with a different Russian assassin in tow.

And the other jab's from Tony, his consolation prize best man. (As Tony has been referring to himself, with Clint getting out an air violin to play, every time he does it.) “And we're under starters' orders, and we're off!” he hisses in Steve's ears.

Yeah, he's right. Loki has tolerated about as much throat-clearing and place-swapping as he's ever going to, and decided that he's the star of this show and the show must go on, goddammit, whether everyone's turned up and ready yet or not. (In fact only the Hulk isn't yet present. But Bruce is wearing, rather unsuitably, some loose cargo pants and an XXL Hawaiian shirt. Since, as they all decided last night, the high level of emotion involved in a wedding ceremony is going to make an appearance from the big green guy an inevitability.)

“Ladies, gentlemen, superheroes, Avengers... support staff... Justin Hammer... individuals with no recognised legal identity... Kardashians... Mr Sheeran,” Loki begins, looking around genially, sparkling. Literally sparkling: he has an elaborate flower arrangement, between his horns, and it's studded with a few diamonds. What with all the celeb guests, Steve thinks he's probably trying to work the gig to parlay it up into a guest spot on _American's Next Runway Supervillain._ Honestly. How did they let themselves in for this? Is there no-one else who could have done the job, on the most beautiful, most unlikely day of Steve's life?

“We are called here today, to celebrate love.” And Loki cocks his head sideways a little, and pats the Soldier's cheek, and smiles at Steve. And just like that, Steve is utterly reconciled. (For the time being.)

The rest of it, yes, it's a blur. A blur of tears, of course. Steve never expected anything else. He's marrying Bucky. (He's marrying the _Soldier._ He doesn't kick himself for the lapse, or only mentally.) How was he ever not going to cry his way through the ceremony, subtle and covert as he tries to persuade himself his tears are? The Soldier doesn't cry, or not yet: he stands very straight and proud, military you might say.

(Oh, God, Bucky: Steve has a flashback, to nights with Bucky in London pubs, Peg flirting between the two of them, of swing-dancing in real dives, of–. Bucky was beautiful in his uniform, of course. Dancing with one saucy British wench after another. He never looked at Steve, not once the night was underway.)

There's a flush high on the Soldier's cheeks, and his eyes are very bright, gazing straight ahead except for the odd quick flashing grin at Steve. But his dark lashes are dry. There's none of the bitter that Steve can taste: it's all sweetness for him.

And when Loki's got through his rambling perorations and exhortations to the assembled well-wishers and guests – Lord, he does like the sound of his own voice, not that it's a surprise – the Soldier straightens his back, and turns to Steve. As Loki says, “And now, well beloveds, our two grooms have written their own vows, and will plight their troth to each other before us, before I pronounce them husband and husband.” He takes a discreet step back, and looks well pleased with his morning's work.

It's the Soldier first. That's what's in the programme of events, tossed for by Loki and Tony as they haggled out the details, bargaining for burlesque dancing girls and game show themes. Especially The Chase. They have the headmistress babe from The Chase as one of the ushers, it's terrifying.

But Steve would have insisted upon it in any case. Starting out first would have made him feel entirely naked and vulnerable, all the inadequacies of language to express what he's feeling laid bare and painfully evident for his friends to kindly gloss over. Better for the Soldier to dazzle with cultured stretches of incomprehensible poetry, obscure musical choices and sternly passionate, impenetrable avowals, before Steve quickly adds his two cents, five hundred feverishly edited words of contractually enforceable clauses and shy swipes at real sentiment and feeling.

He expects the Soldier's vows to be in Russian, of course. He may cheerfully talk to the whole team – and the admin staff – and most of the Tower's janitors, he's got so chatty now – in English. But Russian is still reserved for Steve, or the other way around. Half the team will probably understand more than Steve, now. They've taken enough classes and watched enough teen-Russian YouTube superstar channels that they're running rings around Steve.

“Steve Rogers, I come to you under a false name, an assumed identity, not technically but in spirit, in fact,” the Soldier begins. And Steve startles enough to almost totter backwards. What? Because what?

The Soldier grins, easy, on seeing his reaction. And grips his hand harder, steadies him. But he gets more serious, his face, as he continues. A little hesitant, even. “I came to you as a stranger, and even an enemy. But you knew me, and embraced me, and I found I could not harm you. I found I loved you, and it was very strange for me to be at the mercy of something so gentle and warm, and to find it. When previously I'd only sought mercy from harsh men with cruel machines, and found none.”

The Hulk blows his nose, like a minor explosion, or a building coming down. The Hulk? That's the quietest that Steve's ever known Bruce transform. But he hasn't much attention to pay to the fact. He's concentrating on not crying. On not crying more. He can't look away from, from, from the Soldier. Can't. They smile at each other and never look away, and the Soldier's eyes are so damn bright too.

“You brought me into the fold, and offered me work that had honour, and friends who – well, to be honest, Steve, friends who've taught me to cheat at cards and dice, and taken me for drinking sessions in Asgard that have done more damage to my liver than decades in cryofreeze ever managed. Assholes!” the Soldier continues, turning around to give hard looks at Clint, at Thor. Who shuffle their feet, and grin, and get nudged by the others.

It's odd, because Steve could swear that the Soldier has a perfect, immaculate script, edited down to the bone. And also that he's deviating from it, going off-message, going improv on Steve's ass. Not only the words, but his voice, too. When he started speaking in English, it was no accent that Bucky's voice had ever known. Not Peggy's crystal-perfect British-English, not a Masterpiece Theatre Upper East-Side plutocrat's drawl. But something accentless and unidentifiable, a newscaster's carefully inoffensive, characterless anodyne crispness.

There's something else that's creeping into it, though. Something that's known and loved Brooklyn much more intimately than the Soldier's cautious tourist trawls can explain, that is much closer to Bucky. But the Soldier's not done: and he has both of Steve's hands now, and he pulls him closer. “You loved me, and you let me get close. And I didn't understand, but it was magical, and I won't let you go now. There's my ring on your finger – you big lunk – and don't you start up at me about where it came from, because it was just loitering around on that jeweler's counter like the special offer free gift of the week, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it! If it ain't a free sample then it don't belong on the counter!”

That had pretty much been Bucky's story, back when he'd been using it for the bakery rolls turning up in Steve's ma's kitchen, instead of in the baker's window down the street like where they belonged. So long ago. Steve's heart hurts so much he begins to wonder if he can have a heart attack right through the serum's effects. “I know I'm not who you thought I might become, again,” the Soldier says, more softly, eyes flitting over Steve's face uncertainly. “Whatever glimpses I might get, whatever flashes in my head, I'm still not him – not Bucky. What I remember is Mother Russia, and the freeze, and a thousand years of ice and missions and murder, blood and obedience. But now I know something else. I know you, I choose you, I love you. I belong with you, I know that. And I'd really like to take you as my lawfully wedded husband, Steven Grant Rogers, Captain America. I would be Bucky for you if I could, but if being me is enough, I will be the best me I can offer you. I brought some dumb with me, too, as an extra wedding gift. Will you have me?”

The Brooklyn twang in his voice, now, is almost familiar, and almost Bucky. But not quite: the intonations are maybe a little too careful. Too learned and practised. It's a wedding gift that's almost too perfect: perfect enough to hurt.

He puts the ring – the new ring, besides his sapphire, the platinum band that he hasn't enquired about the source of because it's better not to ask questions you don't want to hear the answers to – on Steve's finger. Because it's not as if Steve is resisting.

If he's still crying, well, everyone's crying at this point. There's no shame in it. Tony's crying enough that there's snot in his goatee, but he still manages to whistle up Dum-E, acting as ring-bearer, who rolls up with a sassy waddle and offers the cushion. Steve, with hints from the gang, has pretty much a matching wedding ring to apply to the Soldier's metal digit. But it's not the ring that matters, really.

Steve has understood almost from the beginning, that the Soldier will speak to him only in Russian, to keep the distinction clear and vivid in his mind. So that Steve never makes the mistake, and thinks he's dealing with Bucky, that he has Bucky back. But for this, the Soldier is willing to speak English to him. Because it's that important.

Steve takes a look at the scrap of paper, the aide-memoire of prompts and codes that he's allowed himself. And screws it up, one-handed, and throws it away. (Dum-E beeps in horror at the littering, and goes wheeling after to retrieve it.) And he looks at the Soldier, without prompts, without help.

His pals and colleagues are right, after all. He's very lucky. And it's time to speak from the heart. “James Buchanan Barnes,” he begins, proud that his voice is only a little bit unsteady. “Or, the Winter Soldier. Or Buck, or Bucky, or the Soldier: however you identify, whoever you are, I accept whoever you choose or want or feel yourself to be.”

“'Hey, asshole' works too,” the Soldier interjects, with a grin, and Steve squeezes his hands, reproving.

“I almost took you for someone else, when I found you again. Or when you found me. With murder in your heart, but we can skate right on over that. Water under the bridge, right? Someone I knew a long time ago. But although you're real familiar, and you maybe have more in common with that guy than you think you have – you look just as good in a suit – I know the difference. I guess you think that sometimes I don't, but I do. And I know who I'm choosing to marry, and it's you. I'm not confused about that.”

He has to breathe deep at this point. Tony's hand at his back is reassuring, and extra-kindly considering the idiot is still in floods of tears himself. “You're the one I want, and I'd like to take you as my lawfully wedded husband, too. I'd like it a lot. I'm not dumb enough to want you to be someone else,” he says carefully. “Don't forget, I have your admission on record that you brought all the dumb in this marriage with you.”

And he puts the ring where it belongs. And he kisses the Soldier, and once that metal arm grips you about the waist – well, it begins at the waist – it's not like you're going anywhere until he decides to put you down. Which is a fair old while.

And Loki pronounces them husband and husband, which is nice, and the choir and the soprano break out into _The Ballad Of You And Me_ , one of Pete Seeger's _'Love Songs For Friends And Foes'_. Because Steve's always been a rebel at heart, an antagonist, a little guy standing against 'em all, not really a pillar of the Establishment at all.

Someone in an eyepatch, loitering behind a chimney stack, slips away, barely in Steve's eyeline, and the Soldier tosses the little posy that Dum-E forces on him into the crowd.

Loki catches it, too – diving through between them with a ruthless intent that means business. Thor looks kind of happy about it. And if Loki decides that he's fully capable and qualified to officiate, same-day, at his own weird-ass Asgardian step-sibling wedding, too, then Steve figures, there's enough happiness to go round. And then some.

It's chaos, is what it is. Pandemonium. And the Soldier grips him about the waist, with that arm that knows no mercy nor letting go of a target, and whispers in his ear. The return to Russian is actually comforting: it's who they are, now, it's home. As the rice and confetti rain down on them, and the beeps and traffic and shouts of New York filter from down below, Steve closes his eyes. That way, it could be a wedding from seventy years back, a cut-rate cheap-ass ceremony in City Hall. He closes his eyes, and in his head, he says good-bye to Bucky.

And he kisses his husband. And his husband kisses him back.


End file.
